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The top 10 best game sequels of all time
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The sequel is too often a pitstop in the descent of a great game on its way to oblivion or just a repeat of the game without much new to offer, but the when a sequel hits on all cylinders, it takes a franchise further down the road of greatness. Unfortunately, for every Empire Strikes Back, there are three or four that come out more like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. True with movies, and true with video games, sequels more often than not just don't match up to the original.
Here are ten game sequels that not only buck that trend, but add to the original game and expand the franchise to new heights.
The Top 10 Best Game Sequels
10. Super Mario Galaxy
Based on Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy takes the best platformer series into space as Mario races to find power stars in order to save Princess Peach from the evil King Bowser. Combining some of the best features of the games that came before it, Super Mario Galaxy does a great job of translating the controls to the Wii and creating a challenging game with interesting puzzles.
9. Star Wars: Tie Fighter
How do you follow up Star Wars: X-wing, one of the best space combat sims of all time? You move over to the dark side. The first computer game to put the player on the side of the Empire, Star Wars: Tie Fighter let you run missions for Darth Vader in a quest to put down the rebel alliance. With challenging missions and all the sights and sounds one would expect when piloting a ship of the Empire, Tie Fighter is easily among the best game sequels of all time.
8. Tecmo Super Bowl
This sequel to the popular Tecmo Bowl arcade football game was a quantum leap forward not just for the Tecmo Bowl series, but for football games in general. The first game to use real teams, Tecmo Super Bowl featured a full-length season, trackable statistics, fumbles, player substitutions and even injuries. In many ways the forerunner to the modern sports game, Tecmo Super Bowl set a new standard for football sims.
7. Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Actually a prequel to the first four installments of Zelda, Ocarina of Time was the first in the series to jump into 3D. Praised for its ability to successfully translate the series from 2D to 3D, Ocarina of Time had all the parts that make up a great Zelda game: Story, puzzles, action, items and plenty of side quests to keep a curious adventurer busy.
6. Resident Evil II
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Few games have been as far reaching as the Resident Evil series in terms of sure accessibility in multiple formats. From movies to books to comics to t-shirts, about the only thing Resident Evil doesn't have is its own theme park. The biggest difference from the original is a second episode that is unlocked after playing the first episode. This second episode replays the events of the game from a new point of view. The sequel also featured the player being overwhelmed by the zombie horde and the run and fight tactic mimicked great zombie movies.
5. Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare
What do you get when you take a great story-filled first person shooter set in World War II, zap it into modern times and give the multiplayer aspect a shot of digital steroids? One of the best sequels of all time. Call of Duty IV captures the great story and gameplay of the series and successfully translates it to the modern era. With great cinematic scenes and hardcore action, the single player campaign is full of thrills, but its the multiplayer action that makes Call of Duty IV shine. With the ability to level up and gain combat perks like carrying multiple weapons or more ammo, Call of Duty IV brings the successful franchise a mighty step forward.
4. Super Metroid
As one of the most popular games of the Metroid series, Super Metroid created the blueprint for subsequent platformers to follow. With a large, open-ended world with many different crooks and crannies to explore, Super Metroid created a perfect balance of action and adventure and introduced new elements to platformers like abilities gained to access new areas of the world. This type of gameplay has been successfully reproduced in other games like Super Paper Mario, where Mario gains the ability to flip from 2D to 3D.
3. Super Smash Bros. Melee
This sequel to the Nintendo 64's Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee expanded on the idea of famous Nintendo characters duking it out fight-game style by adding an adventure game mode and tons of other cool single player games to flesh out what was considered to be the weakest area of the original. With new unlockable characters and a smashing soundtrack, Super Smash Bros. Melee delivered on the potential seen int he original.
2. Diablo II
How do you successfully create a sequel to a game credited with helping save the role-playing genre? Take the same basic action RPG gameplay and give it one of those magic mushrooms from the Mario universe to make it bigger, better and just plain more awesome. Few games have nailed the art of creating a sequel as well as Blizzard did with Diablo II. The idea of completely redesigning the class structure and adding randomly generated outdoor areas to go along with the randomly generated dungeons could have easily spelled disaster if Blizzard hadn't done such a successful job of implementing them into the Diablo world.
1. Ultima IV
The very best of perhaps the greatest role-playing game series of all time, Ultima IV is a departure from most other RPGs in that the main goal isn't as simple as defeating some singular evil that has taken over the world. Instead, the player is tasked with perhaps the most challenging quest of all time: becoming a good person. This is accomplished by becoming enlightened in eight different virtues such as Honesty, Justice, Sacrifice and Compassion.
Few games have had such lofty goals and achieved them so well, and because the execution equaled the ambition, Ultima IV tops this list of best game sequels of all time.
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